then, three small ships setting forth, on the bleak 19th of December,
1606, and directing their way to Virginia, with one hundred and five men
on board, and freighted with a goodly store of arms and provisions. Most
of the party were gallant and courtly cavaliers: there were but twelve
laborers and four carpenters in all the company. After a stormy voyage
they passed up the James River, and landing, on its shores, they founded
Jamestown.

[Sidenote: Heinrich Hudson.]

The news of the colonization of Virginia, the success of the adventurous
emigrants in maintaining their settlement, and the fertility, beauty,
and salubriousness of the continent, soon inspired other enterprises of
a similar kind. The Dutch have always been famous navigators; and it was
in 1609 that gallant Heinrich Hudson, alter two previous futile attempts
to find a western passage to India, reached these shores, and sailed up
the noble river which now bears his name. Five years after, a Dutch
colony was formed on Manhattan Island, whereon the city of New York now
stands, to which was first given the name of "New Amsterdam." The colony
prospered, and in 1624 the island was purchased of the Indians for
twenty four pounds English money.

[Sidenote: The Pilgrims and Puritans.]

We now reach the fourth permanent colony on American soil; that which
was more powerful in shaping our destinies and determining our national
traits than any other. The story of the Pilgrims and Puritans is almost
too familiar to be rehearsed. Every schoolboy knows of their adventures
and trials, their hardships and their dauntless energy, their piety and
rigidity of rule, the great qualities by the exercise of which it may